Annual Retreat 2024!
Community Savers and CLASS were back at the amazing Trigonos this year for reflection, relationship-building, and recouperation after another busy 12 months of community action and coproduction.
This year’s strategy workshops focused on developing our financial literacy offer, the potential and pitfalls of going digital, and co-creating a new 3-year strategy for women-led urban transformation that can balance growth with impact and quality of support from CLASS.
Women-led neighbourhood transformation: what works, what next?
- Our approach works because we start with individuals/households and ‘informality’ – people are comfortable in our spaces and the way we do things.
- People love the savings clubs and this is what brings people together – weekly meetings create the space for us to build self-esteem, confidence, connectivity, belonging, financial resilience…. Other issues follow and we can work on them together.
- We are building relationships and understanding within local areas at a time of crisis and division. We look after each other and place value in people, relationships, and compassion.
- We are co-governing well including full transparency over financial resources and decision-making.
- In our relationships with public agencies and authorities we offer solutions, partnerships, and external investment not just challenges/demands.
- We have overcome political resistance with ‘success’ like impactful partnerships and bringing larger numbers of people together.
- Issue-based projects do not survive on their own. Sustaining change around local issues requires the development of strong associations, relationships, and networks. Initiatives fizzle out without a movement approach.
- We need a significant amount of ongoing support for the many existing initiatives spanning so many projects and neighbourhoods but we also need to reach new people and places to achieve wider social justice and to change systems.
Talk About Money
We have achieved great outcomes for neighbourhood change and social and climate justice in recent years such as the Miles Platting Wildlife Corridor and Social Homes for Manchester coalition. Our building blocks remain local women-led savings groups.
We reflected on financial inclusion, resilience, and the idea of ‘financial literacy’ building on brilliant workshops we’ve hosted this year with May Fairweather at Talk About Money CIC. Leaders agreed to further develop their capabilities in this area to build financial literacy among members and encourage increased engagement by parents and young people.
Cashless and paperless?
Its important for Community Savers to be able to organise in ways that work for a wide variety of people and capabilities. We discussed ‘going digital’ and Zoe, Dot and Lina were interested to learn about the new savings app that our Muungano sisters are now using to record and manage transactions in January this year. Being able to come in and save a pound without fear of stigma and doing record keeping that is accessible to those of us who still prefer pen and paper were seen as critically important going forwards. If we go digital and accept direct bank transactions, we need to work this alongside our existing approach to remain inclusive and maintain flexibility. We also need to stay safe and further agreed guidance on this will also be developed.
Equality, diversity, and inclusion
Successive annual workshops on mental health and neurodiversity, and the benefits of diverse leadership, together with the breadth of experiences we have benefited from through Women of Wythenshawe, have encouraged us to think more deeply about leadership, governance, and ways of working.
Approximately 20% of our members are from minority ethnicities and our leadership is 25% minority ethnic, however, only 18% of leaders are Asian or Black. We have a relatively diverse leadership against other characteristics including mental health, long-term conditions, disabilities, single parents/caring responsibilities. The leadership is mostly over 45 and there is a consensus that we have significant work to do to engage younger people and people from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
We discussed a range of strategies for pro-actively encouraging new people to engage in Community Savers including coffee mornings in schools, targeted visits to particular kinds of community group, faith group, and project, and increasing the frequency of our outreach visits to new communities. Leaders also committed to doing more to engage with their existing memberships about the benefits of joining a committee and participating in the wider movement-building activities of Community Savers overall.
Since the retreat, the CLASS team are developing a new initiative to offer experience of charity board governance and the Community Savers movement to women from minority ethnic backgrounds aged 18-35 who are living in low-income neighbourhoods in Greater Manchester and Sheffield.
Movement building, quality, and wellbeing
There is a consensus among the leadership that we want to and should be working to reach more communities - across Greater Manchester and Sheffield in the immediate future - and across the North of England over time.
However, as the number of Community Savers affiliates has grown, as well as their community action having become more ambitious and complex, the pressure on leadership capacity and the CLASS team is being felt. We discussed the need for:
- More support to committees to attract and build their leaderships including with a focus on proactive strategies to attract greater diversity.
- Increased momentum behind the learning exchange visits to new areas that were fundamental to our collective community action before COVID
- A revised structure and expanded team at CLASS. This would include the recruitment of a Movement Coordinator who could manage a team of part-time place-based community facilitators. This could also create routes into employment for local members who have built up appropriate experience (although the roles would not be ring-fenced).
And then… fun!
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New Year Retrospective
2023: A Year of Transformation and WoW!
Today we launch our Community Savers/CLASS 2023 Impact Evaluation!
Community Savers and CLASS are a cross-class alliance between a majority women-led poverty action network and a tailored professional support agency. We follow a learning-by-doing methodology (inspired by www.sdinet.org), where regular reflection and evaluation is critical. We conduct an annual impact evaluation between January and March each year; and this report captures our outcomes and learning during January to December 2023.
Here, we share some highlights.
VIEW OR DOWNLOAD THE REPORT
2023 IN NUMBERS
FINANCIAL RESILIENCE AND WELLBEING
The building blocks of the Community Savers movement are majority women-led and community-based savings clubs. Weekly savings collections create a space for our members to save small amounts while also accessing a range of other activities and information and discussing the issues facing their local community.
Here’s a snapshot of progress in 2023.
STRONGER COMMUNITIES
Leadership development and community-building is at the heart of the Community Savers methodology starting with the financial resilience and wellbeing of our individual members, moving up to confidence and skills development among group committees leading to stronger community associations, and networking community associations together for a stronger collective voice on the issues affecting their neighbourhood and beyond. We are proud of the solidarity and collective purpose and voice that emerged at local levels and across the whole network in 2023!
Women of Wythenshawe = WoW!
Women of Wythenshawe brought together 37 local women leaders from ten different community and service user groups across in 2023. The women are representing a broad range of interests and identities including Carers; SEND parents; women with autism and learning disabilities; women seeking asylum or recently granted leave to remain;survivors of domestic abuse; and women from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Over the first 18 months, leaders have invested significant time in building trust and confidence and skills development, including through bi-lateral exchange visits between the groups, extensive storytelling and listening work, and the development of shared values. Women have coalesced around four priority areas for community action on gendered poverty in Wythenshawe (and Manchester more widely). These are:
- improving the way that public sector workers identify and respond to domestic abuse;
- achieving a higher ratio of ecologically sustainable social homes;
- building the capacity of Wythenshawe schools to provide good quality SEND support; and
- supporting the development of women-led social enterprise
“CLASS’s inclusive approach to convening the WoW network has been commendable. By actively involving women leaders from diverse backgrounds and communities, CLASS has created a platform where all voices are heard and valued.” WoW Support Worker
Miles Platting Community & Age-friendly Network (MPCAN)
MPCAN first formed in 2019 with support from CLASS following discussions with community groups about how residents did not fully understand the local developments taking place under a PFI initiative and how they were anxious about the future.
“MPCAN at the beginning had a formal purpose to facilitate and promote community action. The meshing of older and newer populations, lack of facilities, swimming pool and library- there was a sense that this was a bit bleak, so we needed to cooperate.” MPCAN Leader
MPCAN currently has three action groups and we share some of their brilliant achievements in 2023 below.
Climate Action: Members organised “Our Green and Pleasant Land” Climate Resilience Pageant in July and were delighted to then be one of the grantees for the Greater Manchester Green Spaces Fund. Funding was awarded to develop a wildlife corridor in Miles Platting with support from Dr Jenna Ashton, University of Manchester. Plans for the wildlife corridor are well underway. Project lead Suzanne Walton from Groundwork is carrying out ongoing consultations with residents around the four key sites to determine what kinds of additions they would like to see, from trees to wildflowers to hedging.
St. Cuthberts Communities Together: MPCAN have developed a partnership with the Parochial Church Council of St Cuthberts to re-imagine the church site working with Locality and Participate! as project managers. A community consultation has been carried out and initial concept designs developed, the Bishop of Manchester has put his support behind the project, and MPCAN and PCC have now applied to register a new charity to manage the project called St Cuthberts Communities Together. The vision includes a worship space, NHS joint services centre and a multipurpose social centre with a small amount of social housing. These were some of the infrastructure and services that were supposed to be delivered under the original PFI neighbourhood plan.
“The enthusiasm, the skill set that is being brought to meetings, the funding that has been attracted to the wildlife project and now for St Cuthbert’s. We have built up now into being a serious project that people are willing to fund.” MPCAN Leader
Social Homes for Miles Platting: MPCAN launched this new campaign in October, with a focus on claiming plots of public land that were earmarked for facilities and services for community benefit under the PFI. The current focus is a plot of land that was supposed to host a joint services centre and community hub. Over 200 people attended their consultation day which was followed by a march to the site and a demonstration on 28 October 2023. The Executive Member for Housing will meet residents to discuss the plot in June 2024.
“We look out for each other - if someone is poorly or down, we make sure they are ok. I like to have a sense of achievement – but that we’ve achieved together. It feels good when we get these small wins, and now we are going for much bigger ones! Twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have dared, we just fought for people to get their repairs done. Now, we are aiming high. And it’s good and it feels good. And to be honest, sometimes it goes over my head, but if I don’t understand stuff I say so, and I can also look on the internet now.” MPCAN Leader
Community design & build
A tenant-led community space in Hulme: Following two years of advocacy and partnership working driven by tenant leaders with Aquarius Community Savers, One Manchester Ltd have agreed to renovate a ground floor three-bedroom apartment into a community space. The space aims to combat social isolation and mental health challenges experienced by older and vulnerable people at Hopton Court tower block in Hulme, Manchester. The renovation is set to commence in summer 2024. Cornbrook Medical Practice evidenced during our research in 2021 that one third of Hopton Court’s tenants were suffering from anxiety and depression and the neighbourhood has some of the worst health inequality statistics for Older People living in Deprivation in England.
Beyond the St Cuthberts redevelopment, Community Savers & CLASS have continued to support two further community design and build projects in 2023. Leaders across the network have learned a lot from these processes including a large dose of patience as each initiative has experienced significant delays!
A women-led community space in Wythenshawe: Participatory design work to renovate a derelict Caretakers flat into a women-led social space began in 2019. Progress was slow due to COVID and long delays within the internal processes
of acquiring a lease from the Methodist Church. After agreeing the Head Terms for the lease in July 2022, Mums Mart and CLASS have learned a great deal from two years of further negotiation! We are delighted to have recently signed the lease and work is due to commence in June 2024.
The completed project will create a free to use community space for women’s groups across the Wythenshawe area for at least ten years. Our thanks go to the National Lottery Community Fund without whose support and patience this project would not have made it to the finish line! We would also like to
thank the Smallwood Trust and the Women of Wythenshawe assessment panel who
approved a small uplift grant to cover recent cost inflations.
MAKING MANCHESTER FAIRER
According to data collated by Shelter, there were 15,268 households on the waiting list for social housing, 3,926 children in temporary accommodation, and 7,773 people recorded as homeless in the City of Manchester in 2023. Yet, between 2012 and 2022 only 506 out of 23,364 new build homes were for social rent. Together with partners, we have formed a coalition of ten VCSE and activist/residents’ groups called Social Homes for Manchester which is making the following six requests of Manchester City Council as they prepare the new Local Plan for the city:
- At least 30% social homes included in all new developments of over 10 units to be enacted in local policy and enforced through the setting and enforcement of section 106 obligations.
- Stronger public accountability and scrutiny for the setting and enforcement of developer obligations to build new social housing.
- Establish a Commission on Social Housing for the City of Manchester.
- Develop a practical strategy for the promotion of Community Led Housing.
- Develop a practical strategy for the renovation/transfer of empty homes into homes for social rent.
- Ensure all new developments are climate and nature friendly.
ASK YOUR COUNCILLOR TO PLEDGE THEIR SUPPORT
Bishop of Manchester David Walker has agreed to chair the new Manchester Social Housing Commission. Our asks and the Commission itself are supported by the Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Housing at Manchester City Council; and we are in the process of recruiting Commissioners. The Commission will remain rooted in local campaigns and the process itself is aimed at mobilising resident/community coalitions across the city to hold local, regional and central government administrations to account for the recommendations that are developed. The other members of the coalition include: GM Community Led Homes Hub; GM Tenants Union, Greater Together Manchester, Shelter GM, Mustard Tree, and Steady State Manchester. We are excited to have also recently joined the national Homes 4 Us alliance.
FUTURE DIRECTION
In the main report you can also read reflections from the Community Savers leadership and our partners on progress, co-governance, and what we have learned about community action, as well as our plans for the year ahead, so don’t forget to:
VIEW OR DOWNLOAD THE REPORT
Excerpts from 'What have we learned?'
“Community action is easier with the support of a whole network.”
“Community action brings people together, it can result in real change that is actually needed. Its powerful as it comes from within our communities as we are the experts we know what will work and what is needed. It feels really good when change happens from within our communities - it can bring pride and improve wellbeing and confidence. Community action can also be really uplifting and fun.”
“I’ve learned about the way the council operates… both the politicians and the officers.”
“The importance of bringing the groups together so we have a bigger, louder, voice. The more of us, the more voice we have, the more the decision makers have to listen.”
“I have also learnt a lot from some mistakes we have made e.g. don’t go to planning meetings and trust that the council is going to work with us with the openness that
we offer them.”
“Bringing together a knowledge of who to go to: that kind of intelligence is important... we’re getting a checklist of where is useful to go to.”
Excerpts from 'Reflections on co-governance'
“I think it’s really good the way we co-govern and share the decision making. We feel like we
are listened to and more involved. We get to make them choices… We get all the reports and everything we need. If we can’t attend a meeting, we get all the updates.”
“It’s working well: everyone is happy with the decisions because it is equal - we have lots of
opportunity to talk about what’s going on and if we agree. Everyone’s voice is heard.”
“I have really loved representing Savers at the trustee meetings. I have learnt a lot about all the groups that CLASS supports and how the charity is developing. The leadership team is a great way of making shared decisions.”
“We work well with CLASS…You’ve taken time to get to know us all individually and you give us the support we need. Like me, people telling me I lack confidence. But I can do it. I’m good at what I do. I say it as it is and not everyone can cope with that, but CLASS has never had a problem with this. They take a personal approach they make sure you are ok that is all part of it as well. It’s like we are a big family.”
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